103 Responses to “Photo of young Obama”

Damn, I’m glad I voted for him too- but for what he stands for (if he follows through). This is just icing on the cake.

Besides, if this WAS weed, I’d be all for it. I want a president high at least once a week, the level of introspection would be good for preventing all the stupid crap our president NOW has caused.

Light up in the oval office, and get Americans (who have overwhelmingly admitted to trying weed) who are are so damn uptight to chill the hell out, stop fearing every damn disaster/terrorist contingency as a basis for daily life, and maybe people would start enjoying life in this country on a level like Spain.

Tom Hale and anyone else upset over the fact that it looks like he’s smoking a joint:

Who cares if these photos had came out during the campaign? Obama talks openly about his youthful drug use in his two autobiographies. In fact, one of the ironic little mini-scandals during the campaign was that some people claimed he exaggerated his drug use in the books and actually didn’t use as many as he claimed (though Hillary supporter Robert Johnson (no, not that Robert Johnson, the one who founded BET) took the other route and assumed that since he used drugs, he obviously must also have dealt drugs as well).

Photos like these are only damaging if you are trying to cover something up. If you are open and upfront about your foibles, photos like these aren’t bad at all.

Well, he’s making the political moves to ensure some functionality when he gets in the chair. Let’s hope the compromises are just that. Having a hate-spewing fascist do the inaugural invocation probably made him throw up in his mouth a little.

Part of me wants a President that has never smoked weed, never dressed in such a manner, so obviously proud of the lifestyle he is promoting in those photos. – The more sensible part of me realizes that pretty much everyone under 60 has tried some sort of illegal substance – and if there was never a time in your life when you were light hearted and irresponsible, then you definitely couldn’t understand the average American.

I’m betting he’d prefer that those photos weren’t made public. At least I’m hoping that’s how he feels.

tom hale, until they get it fixed, which ms thinks will be “soon”, do not use internet explorer. there are major security issues and massive holes that any minor hacker can utilize to their advantage. nnnng, nevermind, they say it has been “fixed”. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7787445.stm and p.s.: badass pics!

I think he’s just being goofy for the camera. I’d bet he didn’t smoke a whole lot of weed. The word he used in his autobio was “experiment,” correct? Barack just has this “good kid” vibe about him, that just seems to radiate every time he admits to some fault. He tried weed in college because practically everybody tries weed college. I doubt it was more than a few times. He just doesn’t seem the type to really be crazy about it. The only reason he’s still smoking is because cigarettes are addicting.

Clinton probably toked much more and his claims that he didn’t inhale only make it so much more obvious that he did.

btw, I don’t get the whole inauguration scandal at all. I mean, it’s Rick Warren for godsakes. The diet coke of modern evangelism. You’d think Fred Phelps had given the invocation with the way some people are reacting.

tom@# 42, then why the hell did u vote for bush? TWICE!?! he admitted smoking pot, and snorting cocaine, and taking LSD! and exactly WTF is the ‘lifestyle’ he is promoting? college? coolness? he’s smoking a cigarette for chrissakes! methinks u needs to loosen up just a bit there home-slice. take a nice deep breath….aaaaah. there u go. just relax! remember: u didn’t vote for him anyway!

Image search for Bogart and you’ll see that most of the time he’s got a cigarette in or near his mouth he’s holding it in that “keep the rain off it” way. All those photos can’t be joints. Or can they? Maybe he doesn’t want to pass them on.

My grandfather always shielded his cigarettes that way, or more so, because of snipers, he said.

Am I the only one that notices the way he’s toking the joint/cigarette – whatever it is. The way he’s drawing on the joint/cigarette is exactly the way people generally do when they’re smoking pot. Add that to the Panama hat and the first thing I thought of when I saw the photo is ganja.

minTphresh – I like Obama – the Man, I like the photos. I grew up in Mobile, AL – the Redneck capital of the world – joined the US Navy right after turning 20 and spent a few years in San Diego – where I spent many a night walking down Mission Beach with my friends listening to Jimi Hendrix. What do you think I was doing?

You have to remember that one day one of my coworkers (1,500 of them), might look on BB – I can only say so much.

FWIW, my questions come from a genuine desire to understand what motivates people to speak of “promoting” a “lifestyle”. It sounds like coded xenophobia against any “lifestyle” (really _culture_) that is not of the white Christian picket fence type (also see the code word “American”). Perhaps you just meant the “lifestyle” that is getting high, but then that doesn’t make sense that you would tie it to his clothing choices or the fact that he looks pleased with himself.

Basically it seems to me that using the word lifestyle is generally a ‘coded concept transform’ that denigrates Different cultural modalities. That is probably the reason you are getting bitten back so much here, which I didn’t realize was going on when I crafted my post. If I had known I would have balanced it more to show that I thought your post held a reasonable stance when it admitted that anything other than acceptance is an unreasonable stance :)

I have this feeling that whoever is elected president, no matter what you promise on the campaign trail â€“ blah, blah, blah â€“ when you win, you go into this smoke-filled room with the twelve industrialist capitalist scum-fucks who got you in there. And youâ€™re in this smoky room, and this little film screen comes down â€¦ and a big guy with a cigar goes, â€œRoll the film.â€ And itâ€™s a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle youâ€™ve never seen before â€¦ that looks suspiciously like itâ€™s from the grassy knoll. And then the screen goes up and the lights come up, and they go to the new president, â€œAny questions?â€ â€œEr, just what my agenda is.â€ â€œFirst we bomb Baghdad.â€ â€œYou got itâ€¦â€

Surprised no-one’s pointed this out before, but the “reversed ciggie” smoking style (lit end cupped in the palm, filter end outwards) is the normal way fags are smoked… in Russia (and previously-affiliated Eastern European countries.) It shields the lit end from the icy chill of the winds coming off the steppe or something. IMHO it looks waaaay cooler than the “western” style. I even affected that style myself as a wannabe cool student, for about ten minutes :) Not that it makes a blind bit of difference to anything, except perhaps to make Obama look even cooler than he looked before.

I think I’ve made it clear enough what I think about the photos. I didn’t come here for an argument. If you only read half of what I post, then you’ll get an incomplete picture of my opinion, which is obviously what some of you are doing.

also, in almost all older movies with lots of smoking scenes, dudes/cowboys/bad guys/dirty harry types/french people/etc. seem to hold their cigarettes like this, especially if it’s cold or they are pulling the last drag before putting it out.

From the whole series of shots, that appears to just be a rolled cigarette… Not to sound like a fan or anything, but all those digs would stand up today just fine. Especially the hat. I know everyone gets help on speech writing, but at least this guy doesn’t need help getting dressed. I know it’s not why we elected this guy (I hope) but it doesn’t hurt to have a president with a positive, confident physical image.

Of course I saw the freepers going ape-poopy over this photo, naturally assuming it MUST be a “joint”, despite the fact that we already know he smokes cigarettes, and nothing in this photo proves it’s weed– just a kid trying to look cool, which is really what cigarettes are all about to teenagers. . . of course, evidence of Bush’s dalliances with drugs are unimportant.

(In reality it just “looks like” or “could be”. Seems like many of you are way too uptight on the possibility. Besides, didn’t he already admit to smoking weed, doing blow, and maybe other stuff, in his autobiography?)

Since when is trying to cover up past actions more “responsible” than acknowledging it? Obama came clean about his past drug use years ago, and of his own volition. That’s part of what makes him a more honorable guy on the issue than the last two presidents, who did exactly the same thing but caused minor scandals by trying to hide it.

@15, you should read the linked article before starting the snark machine. The photographer took those pics way back when, and stuffed them in a box. She forgot all about them until Obama started his campaign, and immediately put them into a safe-deposit box to make sure they didn’t come out during the campaign as something that could hurt him in some way. Now Time has published them, because they’re (a) harmless and (b) great photos.

On a tropical morning in 1957, the American destroyer USS Hunt was about to depart from Rio de Janeiro to complete its summer training cruise for Annapolis midshipmen, and one of them was missing. As the ship prepared to cast off, crew members peered over the side looking for their absent classmate. Then, five minutes before departure, a Mercedes sports car roared onto the pier, driven by one of Rio’s most beautiful fashion models. The gull-wing doors popped up, and out from under appeared Midshipman John McCain. He kissed the model goodbye and, to the rowdy cheers of his shipmates, climbed aboard.

tom, i promise i won’t tell yer redneck friends! hey, i have redneck friends too. but, like jimi says:” i gotta let my freak flag fly”! they seem to accept that as i ‘keep it real’, and don’t hold back. that and i work hard, they seem to respect that too. fly on, lil wing.

“i was a pretty heavy smoker for many years, i almost always held cigarettes over hand. i don;t think anyone thought i was smoking a joint, though i usually preferred pipes and bongs for that…”

So you must not have been hitting those cigs like a jay then ;)

That is, I still maintain there is a sizable difference between ‘hitting / pulling / etc’ and ‘puffing / dragging / etc’ in terms of how the two approaces look to third parties. Thus, B could have framed his face to appeal to the possibility that he was smoking cannabis

Yup. My first thought: “It can’t be.” Clicking on the thumbnail to see it up close proved it. If you are really wondering, ask yourself if you’ve ever seen a joint with an end that isn’t tapered. Rolling machine joints don’t count because you wouldn’t have tried that twice, nor do the government pictures from the faulty monkey test era that you may have seen in textbooks or DARE propaganda. If you have never seen a joint, return 0.

“i think he was just trying to look like a badass…i think it worked”

Couldn’t agree more. Looking at it with the cowboy theme in mind it could very well be a lingering drag for dramatic effect, thanks for pointing this out. I wonder if he thought it all the way through to the ambiguities when the photographer snapped that one?